In the last week of September 1889, at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures, the delegates of the states that had signed the Metre Convention in 1875, and that paid for the bureau and its instruments, sanctioned the one bar, out of thirty, that the International Committee had chosen. Made by Johnson Matthey in London from platinum alloyed with a tenth part of iridium, given an X-shaped section and marked with two fine lines whose distance apart, at the temperature of melting ice, would henceforth be the metre, the chosen bar was deposited at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in the Pavillon de Breteuil at Saint-Cloud, and its sisters went out to the member states by lot. Nobody ever measured a road with it.
It was made to be compared with. Every national copy was calibrated against it, and until 1960, when the metre was redefined by the light of the krypton atom, a length anywhere in the metric world was true only so far as it agreed with a bar of platinum and iridium kept in a pavilion outside Paris. It was not even the first metre: a bar of pure platinum had been lodged in the national archives in Paris in 1799, and in 1889 the conference recorded the new bar as equal to it in length. It was simply the one everything else was held against.
Doom keeps bars of that kind, one to each branch, and they are seldom the first record of their branch and not always its finest. The archive platinum of the whole genre is the first Black Sabbath album, released on 13 February 1970; beneath it lie eight prototypes, the records in traditional, epic, death, gothic, funeral, drone, stoner and sludge doom against which critics, rival bands and the bands themselves have measured everything that came after, each set down with its date, label, room or producer, two songs and the evidence that it holds the length.
Our test is narrower than a canon's. A record qualifies when the witnesses converge on it as the measure of its branch, in the Hall of Fame the American monthly Decibel has filled for two decades, in the lists of Metal Hammer and Terrorizer, and in what the branch went on to copy. Weight proves nothing on its own. The chronology that joins the eight is told in doom metal history, and none of it is retold here.
Traditional and epic doom: the two oldest prototypes
Recorded at Total Access in Redondo Beach with Joe Carducci producing, released by SST in October 1986 and sung for the first time by Scott "Wino" Weinrich, who had come over from The Obsessed, the third album by the Los Angeles quartet that played Black Sabbath tempos on a hardcore punk label, Saint Vitus, hammered a band's exile from both metal and punk into a creed in its title song and carried the same slowness into a song about drink, "Dying Inside". Decibel inducted it into its Hall of Fame as number 61 in March 2010, and Chris Chantler of Metal Hammer called it a "bleak, strung-out monument to alienation". Traditional doom had older records, from Pentagram and Trouble. It took its creed from this one.
Epic doom was named by the Candlemass debut of 1986 and measured by the record after it. Recorded at Thunderload Studios in Stockholm between July and September 1987, produced by the band and released by Axis Records on 9 November 1987, Nightfall set the operatic voice of Messiah Marcolin over Leif Edling's leaden riffs, left Chopin's funeral march tolling between the songs and gave the Stockholm quintet, Candlemass, the singles "Samarithan" and "At the Gallows End". Scott Koerber, inducting it into the Decibel Hall of Fame as number 47 in January 2009, called it "a template which would go on to define the sound heretofore known as doom metal". The band agrees: at Hell's Heroes in Houston on 21 March 2024, seven of the eleven songs it played came from Nightfall.
Death doom and gothic doom: two throats, two standards
Released by Peaceville on 11 October 1993 and produced by Robert "Mags" Magoolagan with the band, Turn Loose the Swans is the record on which the West Yorkshire sextet with a violinist standing among its guitars, My Dying Bride, let Aaron Stainthorpe move between a death metal growl and a sung lament inside the same dirge, on "Sear Me MCMXCIII" and "Your River" above all, while Martin Powell's violin was woven into the riffs instead of laid over them. Decibel made it the fifteenth entry in its Hall of Fame in May 2006, and Nick Terry called it "a funereal, sombre masterpiece". Paradise Lost's Gothic entered that Hall sooner and matters more to metal as a whole. For death doom drawn narrowly, the length is kept here.
The gothic branch took its measure from the Norwegian septet that put a growl and a soprano at one microphone, Theatre of Tragedy. Recorded at Commusication Studio in Beindersheim, Germany, with Pete "Pee Wee" Coleman producing and released by Massacre in August 1996, Velvet Darkness They Fear set Raymond Rohonyi's growl against Liv Kristine's soprano on "And When He Falleth" and "Der Tanz der Schatten", a duet of beauty and beast that many later bands copied. The critics never agreed on it: Chronicles of Chaos gave it nine out of ten, AllMusic three stars out of five. A reference record does not need to be loved. It needs to be copied.
Nobody hands a new drummer the first doom record of anything. You hand him the one everybody nicked from, turn it up, and tell him that is the tempo.
Gareth Llewellyn, KaosMetal
Funeral doom and drone: the bars that barely move
Funeral doom was founded by a Finnish trio that had broken up before its only album reached the shops, Thergothon, and standardised by a Finnish quartet with an organist where a bassist ought to stand. Recorded in 1994, produced by the band and released by Red Stream in 1995, Stormcrowfleet by Skepticism runs six pieces across fifty-seven minutes, from "Sign of a Storm" to "The Gallant Crow", with Eero Pöyry's organ, in Decibel's account, funnelled through an amplifier cabinet to carry the whole low end, so that the chords stand under the voice like a catafalque under a coffin nobody hurries to lift. Decibel made it Hall of Fame number 110 in 2014, and Scott Koerber wrote that it "swapped adrenaline and brutality for ubiquitous sorrow". Where the albums list keeps the Thergothon record for its priority, this page keeps Skepticism for its length.
Drone keeps its bar in Seattle. Recorded at Avast! Recording Company in August 1992 with Stuart Hallerman and released by Sub Pop on 5 February 1993, Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version, by Dylan Carlson's band Earth, holds three pieces across seventy-three minutes, "Seven Angels" and the twenty-seven minutes of "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine" among them, each chord let down like a sounding lead into water too deep to give back an echo. AllMusic gave it five stars and heard ambient music "completely and totally suffused with threat and fuzz". Drone doom still copies its template.
Stoner doom and sludge: the bars that came out filthy
Stoner doom is measured in Dorset. Recorded at Chuckalumba Studios in May and June 2000 with Rolf Startin and released by Rise Above on 25 September 2000, Dopethrone, the third album by Jus Oborn's trio, Electric Wizard, sank seventy-one minutes of fuzz into "Funeralopolis" and the twenty-minute title track, riffs rusted onto the amplifiers like wheel nuts no spanner will shift. Terrorizer gave it nine out of ten and named it the album of the decade in 2009, and Decibel placed it second among stoner rock albums in 2007 and eighth among the hundred best doom albums in 2014. Two magazines, three verdicts, one record.
Sludge took its standard from the New Orleans five-piece that recorded on the thirteenth floor of an abandoned department store, Eyehategod. Produced by the band at Studio 13 and released by Century Media on 9 September 1993, Take as Needed for Pain drove "Blank" and the title track forward in riffs lurching like a man carrying a sheet of plate glass down a staircase in the dark. Chris Chantler, in Metal Hammer's essential sludge list, wrote that the record "raised the bar" by affirming "the emergent underdog genre's key sonic facets", and Terrorizer named it the greatest sludge album in 2009. The Melvins had cut the first sludge records years before. The measure was taken from this one.
The eight reference records in one table
| Branch | Record | Released | Label | Studio or producer | Two songs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional doom | Saint Vitus, Born Too Late | October 1986 | SST | Total Access; Joe Carducci | "Born Too Late", "Dying Inside" |
| Epic doom | Candlemass, Nightfall | 9 November 1987 | Axis | Thunderload; the band | "Samarithan", "At the Gallows End" |
| Death doom | My Dying Bride, Turn Loose the Swans | 11 October 1993 | Peaceville | Robert "Mags" Magoolagan | "Sear Me MCMXCIII", "Your River" |
| Gothic doom | Theatre of Tragedy, Velvet Darkness They Fear | August 1996 | Massacre | Commusication; Pete Coleman | "And When He Falleth", "Der Tanz der Schatten" |
| Funeral doom | Skepticism, Stormcrowfleet | 1995 | Red Stream | The band | "Sign of a Storm", "The Gallant Crow" |
| Drone | Earth, Earth 2 | 5 February 1993 | Sub Pop | Avast!; Stuart Hallerman | "Seven Angels", "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine" |
| Stoner doom | Electric Wizard, Dopethrone | 25 September 2000 | Rise Above | Chuckalumba; Rolf Startin | "Funeralopolis", "Dopethrone" |
| Sludge | Eyehategod, Take as Needed for Pain | 9 September 1993 | Century Media | Studio 13; the band | "Blank", "Take as Needed for Pain" |
Read down the dates and every bar but one was cast between 1986 and 1996, on independent labels, by bands that could not have known they were cutting a standard. The bar of 1889 lost its office in 1960, a length nobody consults and everybody inherited. These eight will not lose theirs so easily, because no conference can redefine a riff. Each also carries a song that outgrew its album, and the case for one above all the others is made in the Best Doom Metal Song.
